A region suffering from “abject poverty, filth and squalor, and endemic conflict”, according to the United Nations. On such places does global energy supply rely. Violence in the Niger Delta already puts a big dent in global oil supply. Gas may be next. Gas markets are largely regional affairs, with producers and consumers linked by relatively short pipeline networks. But rising demand means an increasing proportion of supply comes from deposits too far from major markets to be piped, such as those found in the Delta. Gas from these is frozen into liquefied natural gas (LNG) and shipped in tankers all over the world, creating new links in the energy chain.

Nigeria is already the world’s sixth-largest exporter of LNG. New projects are expected almost to triple capacity by 2012. However, gas production is focused in the violence-prone shallows and onshore areas of the Delta. Bernstein Research believes most of Nigeria’s new LNG capacity might be delayed until the middle of the next decade. In global terms, that would mean the loss of one-fifth of incremental supply expected between 2010 and 2015.